Press Release from the NYC DOHMH on MRSA

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has good news.

While the statement pretty much backs up my assertion, there is something in there that makes me uneasy. Under the recommendations for sports teams, it says:

5. Staff should advise players against body shaving

So that's the real human cost of MRSA. Female high school athletes with hairy legs and armpits and male athletes that look like jesus. High school dances are going to be gross. Everyone loses.

Touche, MRSA. I underestimated you.

And to you, members of the media, I owe an apology. You may get back to your irresponsible fear-mongering.

Thanks to Kerri for the catch.

Repent, For The End of the World is at Hand

Humanity has a new enemy. Its name is MRSA, or Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus

This happened.

So, of course, this happened.

Predictably, nobody's listening to reason.

This is a fairly regular occurrence. A largely benign virus or bacteria kills someone, as diseases are wont to do, and, suddenly, we're in the middle of an epidemic.

Only we're not. The media takes a few tragic stories, combines them with the fact that the infectant is more prevalent than we think (which isn't tough, since the general population spends approximately no time thinking about diseases they haven't heard of), projects an absurd worst case scenario, and then feeds off its own echoes until people realize they aren't dead.

Meanwhile, politicians fall all over themselves to overreact to an issue that is waaaaaaaaaaay outside their area of expertise (if they have one at all). Perhaps it would be more effective just to legislate infection out of existence. If staph becomes criminal, only criminals will have staph.

The fact of the matter is that the real risk of staph infections is to hospital patients and not to the general public. Even if contracted, staph can typically be defeated by a healthy immune system. WebMD says:

"A report issued earlier this month by the CDC (Center for Disease Control)concluded that nearly 19,000 people died from MRSA infections in 2005. Almost all of these deaths occurred among people with weakened immune systems who were being treated or had recently been treated in hospitals or other health care settings, including nursing homes and dialysis centers."

and:

"Health-care-associated MRSA can occur as surgical wound infections, bloodstream infections, and pneumonia. These life-threatening invasive infections are resistant to many, but not all, antibiotics. Roughly 5% of people treated in U.S. hospitals for MRSA died of the infection in 2005, according to a new report from the government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality."

and the clincher:

"CDC spokeswoman Nichole Coffin says community-associated skin infections are typically mild in nature. But she adds that in rare cases they can become life-threatening."

So we learn from this that most people infected with the "superbug" have compromised immune systems and are already in the hospital, the natural home of staph infection. Furthermore, this "superbug" is resistant to some antibiotics. Seriously? That's like a cyborg "supersoldier" being resistant to some bullets. Not so impressive.

Now the CDC might not have the same authority to speak on disease as, say, Fox 5's Rosanna Scotto and Ernie Anastos, but hopefully its assessment will help calm society's frayed nerves.

Rather than get worked up needlessly, we should listen to experts like the CDC, the Department of Health and physicians, not uninformed school parents, or those with an agenda that has nothing to do with public health.

I officially declare this outbreak over. And stupid.

At Least We're Not The Yankees

With Boston's sweep last night, the baseball roles have officially changed. The Sox became the Yanks (Hands down the best team in baseball) and the Yanks became the Braves (hands down not quite as good as the best team in baseball).

So who are the Mets? My first instinct was the mid-90's Cleveland Indians (all hit, no pitch), but I'm not too impressed with their hitting either. Plus, weren't those Indians always in the playoffs? This team only has one appearance so far, so I'm not going to get too excited. My second choice was the pre-2004 Red Sox (too expensive and not just not that good), but I don't think that appropriately takes into account '06 and the fact that it took a lightly precedented collapse to keep us out of the playoffs.

They are the late oughties Mets (the Mets of the late oughts?). They are a great, yet fatally flawed team. A theory I've been floating to my Mets fan friends is that we actually lucked out by not making the playoffs. Here me out:

1) The Mets wouldn't have won the World Series anyway
We simply don't have the pitching. For two straight years now, the Mets have gone into the postseason with a rotation full of 2 and 3 starters. I love Ollie and Maine, but they are not aces. Coming off his shoulder injury, Pedro could be anything from the best pitcher in baseball to a slightly less insane Jose Lima. Our bullpen, which was a huge asset last year, killed us all year. The world champion Red Sox, on the other hand, went into the postseason with the two of the greatest playoff pitchers of all time and a very solid bullpen. If you're Willie and you have to give the ball to one pitcher for one inning to save the entire season, is there anyone you can look at that you would trust completely? Omar has to build this staff for a championship, not just a playoff appearance.

2) This team is too cocky
I believe that these Mets fell apart because they went into the same victory lap mode they were in at the end of last year. When you run away with the division, this is a good thing. Players stay loose and healthy for the grind of the playoffs. When you are still competing for the division, you
have to take care of business first. Mathematical probability is not the same as clinching.

The truly great teams don't beat you, they bury you. Look at the dynasty Yankees or this year's Pats for evidence. If you made an error against those Yankees, they'd put up 5 runs before the
official scorer had put it on the board, then they'd spit in your eye and sleep with your girlfriend. Ruthless. Meanwhile, the Pats are biologically incapable of winning by fewer than two touchdowns. Obviously, that's an edge the Mets are missing.

The '05 and '06 Mets were pleasant surprises. '05 was a growth year. No one had any expectations. '06 was a celebration from beginning to end. This is the first year this team has felt any pressure. It did not respond well. I don't think its been reported, but I'm pretty sure that David Wright and Jose Reyes have a blood pact to never let this happen again. Its a good lesson to learn young.

3) The collapse should light a fire under Omar
No elite pitchers, 40 year old corner outfielders ( I know Shawn Green isn't there quite yet, but his defense has not aged gracefully), and unsettled second base and catcher situations are a sample of the Mets' problems. Omar made big time moves going into '06 that put this team over the top, but left things pretty much as is going into '07 even though some of his players were one year solutions (Valentin, the bullpen). He also failed to address the loss of both his ace starter (Pedro) and ace reliever (Duaner Sanchez).

If the Mets lose in the playoffs, the temptation exists for Omar to say, "we're close enough" and tweak a team that needs to be reworked on a greater scale. Missing the playoffs is an embarrassment that should get Omar to make the same kind of ballsy, creative moves responsible for this amazing core of talent.

---------------------------------------------------

Obviously, I'm not happy about what happened this year. This theory is probably just a rationalization to help me deal with my latent anger in a non-homicidal way. The Mets let 2007 slip away because they lacked the killer instinct to dominate the competition. In effect, the 2007 Mets were the 2004 Yankees: A good team that played its worst at the wrong time and made history on the wrong side of the ledger. Whether they didn't have enough pitching or enough heart is immaterial. They just didn't find a way to win when it mattered.

If anything can be gained from this frustrating situation, its that everyone from the front office to the dugout feels compelled to do everything in his power, every day, to bring a championship home to Flushing.

And Mets fans aren't thinking that we're going to win one championship and be all happy about it. We're looking for a mini-dynasty, at the least. That means competing year in and year out with the stacked AL, not just getting out of the NL alive. With a core of Wright, Reyes and Beltran--three amazing young talents on the right side of 30-- this is not unreasonable. A small setback in one year is tolerable if it helps the organization in the long run.

At least that's what I tell myself

caveat

I just want to make it clear that I know that the incriminating Liberal Party info on Rudy's Wikipedia page was very likely added by someone with a login id of notfredthompson or mittsbitch or something of the sort.

More Rudy In Drag

At first, I thought I had really put the fear of God into Rudy Giuliani. Since my post, he had not supported a single other New England sports franchise. For my part, I had spoken to no Iowans or New Hampshireans (Hampshireites? Hampshirettes?) in regards to Rudy's well known liberal past.

I did, however, want to show Rudy that I had couple more arrows in the old quiver. So I wanted to take the chance to point out that, according to Wikipedia, Giuliani ran for mayor in '89, '93 and, '97, as a Republican/Liberal Party candidate. Three times, he was unable to garner support from the Conservative Party. That might not mean anything, but remember this is New York we're talking about here. Through midwestern eyes, this city is Gomorrah to LA's Sodom. It shouldn't be that hard to look conservative by comparison.

So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, plus I had some more cards to play if necessary. Then I read about how he would have been offed in 1986, if only one more crime family had had the cannolis to pull the trigger. 3-2! That's an awfully slim margin by which to avoid assassination. If it was me, I'd like to see the vote fall more in the 4-1 or 5-0 region.

So that was it. The reason why Rudy had been laying low was that he had been taking the time to come to grips with his brush with death. The news deflated me. All that hard work, only to be trumped by organized crime. The same thing happened with my business plans for a friendly protection racket in 1975 and an "everybody wins!" numbers game in '77.

Pretty quickly, though, I realized that death threats are political gold to a former prosecutor. They are something better than gold when they come from the heads of the freaking mafia. Sure, they voted against the hit, but it was pretty close.

I, on the other hand, threatened Rudy's political life, which is the only thing a politician holds more dearly than his actual life. "What about the lives of his children," you might ask. Those only count when the kids are young and cute and can lure in unsuspecting voters. Rudy's kids hate him. They're political liabilities.

In the end, I will take credit for setting Rudy straight after all. But just to be sure, I'm going to need a show of good faith.

Rudy. The line is Pats -16. I expect you to put a few grand on the Redskins to cover. If not, there's this:

Jesus Christ, man! Was there a single day during your two terms that you did not dress as a woman?

Really, Rudy? That's the Way You're Going To Play This?

New Yorkers have gotten used to Rudy Giuliani's repudiation of his work in The City. To gain the acceptance of conservatives, he has campaigned largely on a rewritten account of his mayorality that includes new, improved stances on Republican favorites like immigration and gun control and a "nuanced" (to use a campaign spin word) take on abortion.

By and large, we've been pretty happy to let him spew whatever lies he chose. Everyone in New York knows that Giuliani is running on his record from 9/11/01 to 12/31/01, not his record from 01/01/94 to 9/10/01. Its ok for us to hear that he was ardently opposed to illegal immigrants when he was getting them jobs and benefits, or that his law suit against the gun industry in 2000 has no bearing on his current support for the NRA. New Yorkers are just happy he's not our problem any more. He's not so bad that liberal New York wouldn't wish him on its worst enemies, but just bad enough that it would. Take that, Republicans. No give backs.

Everything was fine until Rudy crossed the sports rivalry Mason/Dixon line.

Now he's gone and done it.

Listen Rudy: You grew up in New York, so you know the drill. Yanks/Sox is an either/or situation with no exceptions. None. You also know how seriously New Yorkers take baseball, so if you wanted us to sit back and remain silent while you made up stories about our time together, you should have at least kept this one thing sacred.

I might be going out on a limb here, but it seems like he's trying to ingratiate himself to the voters of New Hampshire, who will soon help decide his fate. Even still, any primary voter who cared enough about his stance on the World Series 1) already knows he's a Yankees fan and 2) would be pissed off at this blatant example of sports bigamy. I never understood why politicians can't just choose a team and stick with it. Aren't voters looking for decisive leaders anyway? Don't the candidates realize that pandering for the sake of pandering is offensive?

I'm not going to go all New York Post on hizzoner, but I do want to give all future candidates for elected office a primer on playoff loyalty so that this never happens again. Follow these pander-proof steps to avoid awkward situations such as this:

Step 1. Root For Your Favorite Team:

This means you must have a clearly stated favorite team. You can not have a favorite team for every city you've ever lived in (I'm looking at you here, Hillary) and you can not wait until election time to choose one.

Step 2. Root Against Your Favorite Team's Arch Enemy:

This one pretty much speaks for itself. If you have trouble determining who the bad guys are, ask someone or read a local paper.

Step 3. Anything Else is Pretty Much OK:

This includes rooting for a league, a city, or a team with which you have had a passing fascination. Some people like to apply this rule by rooting for the team that beat theirs, figuring that it hurts less to be beaten by the best. Others like to wish death upon that team. Whatever. So long as you follow rules one and two, you have a lot of lattitude with rule three.

So I'm personally going to give Rudy a pass on this one. He violated an unwritten rule which has now been written. It could have happened to any politician looking for political gain at the expense of his long held beliefs. Besides, I'm a Mets fan.

But seriously, Rudy, this is your last chance. I want to see more ownership of your actual stances and accomplishments as Mayor of New York. If not, I think New Yorkers have every right to tell the Republicans of Iowa and New Hampshire the truth: that your ideal constituent is a gay, heavily taxed illegal immigrant without a gun who may not have had an abortion, but definitely could have if she wanted to.

Also, we'll show them this:

Strike-ish

So here's the question:

If a union calls a strike and significantly more members break the strike than don't, who are the scabs?

Taxi drivers are unhappy with the City's decision to equip cabs with credit card machines and GPS devices. The City says the two sides have already agreed on the issue and that the two fare hikes drivers have received in the last 2 years were part of the deal. Unable to get the City to renegotiate, taxi drivers decided to strike...sort of. Newsday.com reported:

While a report from the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade estimated that
more than 95 percent of yellow cabs were on the road, strike organizers
touted the work stoppage as a success. From the looks of it, though, it
wasn't too hard for anyone to get a cab.

Meanwhile, Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of the Taxi Worker's Alliance (TWA), which claims to represent roughly a fifth of the city's 44,000 taxi drivers, also claims that 75% of all taxis were off the streets yesterday.

She has every right to claim whatever she wants. Union negotiations with the City have a long history of being played out in the press. Unfortunately, she looks pretty stupid claiming a massive disruption in New York City life when the reaction of the average person on the street is more like, "There's a taxi strike? Where?"

I didn't realize at first, but The City's decision to implement the contingency plan was a genius move. According to the Post:

Thanks to flat per-person fares, the average 2.8-mile taxi ride, which
normally costs $9.60 will earn a driver who picks up four passengers $60 - a
525 percent increase. The idea is to minimize the impact of the one-day
strike by making drivers an offer they can't refuse.

During the last strike, drivers who worked reported making triple and, in
some cases, quadruple their normal income. "I did the strike last time,
but I cannot afford to do it again," one driver told The Post. "There is too
much money to make."

So the contingency plan is pretty much a super strike breaking tactic/powerball jackpot, but the TWA thinks its a good thing. The best thing, actually.

Many organizers said success could not be judged by how many cars were
on the road or even if the taxi commission buckled under their demands."If
the mayor has to put in place a contingency plan, then the strike was a
success," said cabbie Billy Acquaire.

This seems like a pretty sneaky union if its real goal was to pretend to strike so that 95% of its members could pull in 4 times their normal daily wage. The only other possibility is that the strike was an unqualified failure. But that can't be the case, since Desai claimed the strike a success, proclaiming that, "Despite those poor, pathetic scabs, the streets were empty this morning."

Rhetoric-wise, that totally beats Bloomberg's, "We made a deal and we're going to stick to the deal."

So I'd say the scorecard is pretty squarely in the TWA's favor. If you can claim any number of strikers you want, ignore the fact that your strike was largely ignored, and set the bar for success so low that the City's outright bribery of your "scabs" counts as a victory, its pretty hard to lose.

Joe Torre should have taken a lesson from the TWA. If he had claimed that the Yankees had won 105 games and the AL pennant, and then said that being lowballed was really Steinbrenner's way of showing his appreciation, maybe he'd still be the Yankee manager.

So who are the scabs here? I've got it narrowed down to either the people of New York, who callously played into the hands of "Big City Government" by not realizing there was a strike going on, or Bhairavi Desai herself, who seems to be using this as an opportunity to shed her 12 year old girl persona and reinvent herself as a tough as nails union head. Too bad for her nobody noticed, not even her union.

Desai, right, just after rolling down taxi

window to avoid car sickness

All those who still work at AOL, step forward. Not so fast...

AOL is having some trouble keeping itself together. I think we all saw the signs. For instance, when was the last time you got a tin of AOL cd's in the mail? Exactly.

I think that being the last to realize that mailing Internet capability was not exactly the hallmark of a successful Internet company might have directly lead to their most recent, massive round of layoffs this past Monday.

My friend has worked over there for about three years. When he started, AOL had, by his estimation, somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 employees worldwide. Three rounds of layoffs later, they are down to 8,000. I can't imagine a company letting go of 2,000 people and having that be the third largest layoff in three years. I also can't imagine the incredible amount of ass-kissing that goes on in an organization where thousands of people lose their jobs every year.

The ironic thing is that I think that the dearly departed were actually the big winners here. According to my friend, their severance package will consist of 4 months salary, plus unused vacation days, plus unpaid bonuses, plus assistance finding a new job. Redundant executives will do even better. They can pull in anywhere from 6 months to a year of salary while sipping margaritas on a beach in the Dominican Republic. The part about the DR and the margaritas is actually in their contracts. I think.

Former AOL exec mulls career move

Meanwhile, there is a transition team of laid off employees who will be paid twice their salary for the privilege of continuing to work for AOL until the end of the year. After that, the regular severance package kicks in.

And the losers? I guess that would be the loyal AOL employees who avoided judgement day only to take on 25% more work. Also the Starbucks on the corner. Economic data shows that a layoff of this size will reduce latte sales by over 35,000 a year. That says nothing for frappucinos.

A recap:

Redundant AOL workers: Free money for doing nothing. Paid vacation for 4 months or so, frosty beverages in near future.

Remaining Staff: More work, slight pay increase, organizational morale similar to that of German army as American and Russian troops raced to liberate Berlin in final days of WWII, crazy tie Thursdays (new initiative).

I wish someone would fire me so nicely.

unleashing my subconcious on the world

oh. I've started a blog.

I still need to work out some kinks. I missed the mark with my hypertext in the first post, linking to "this" rather than "the following," but I suppose my aim will get better. Also, it seemed a lot longer than I remember it in my head and it wasn't as interesting.

eh.

It should be noted that the title came from a random title generator, so I take no credit, but, more importantly, will tolerate no criticism.

an unprecedented beginning to a blog

I have many problems with the way people use the English language, but one in particular was brought to my attention today. I think its time to retire the use of the word "unprecedented" for non-legal purposes.

The following, taken from a criticism of an interview with disgraced Senator Larry Craig, brought this to my attention:

"his repeated use of the phrase, 'I’m in the middle of an unprecedented media firestorm' show an inflated sense of self-importance which still has the power to shock.
'Unprecedented?' Compared to what - Nixon’s resignation? The murder of JFK? September 11?"

Its probably safe to say, with very few exceptions, that almost every experience of the human condition has pretty much been done to death. The only real differences are matters of scope. I guess a nuclear holocaust could cause death and destruction on an unprecedented scale, but that's just because we have more people packed into less space than ever before. Numbers aside, it would still have both nuclear attacks and regular old holocausts as precedents.

Politicians, news reporters, and, worst of all, sports broadcasters are guilty of making the event at hand more important than it is by declaring it to be a singular event in recorded time. But what, after 200,00 years of human history, can actually be said to not have a

1pre·ce·dent (n)
(an event that is) prior in time, order, arrangement, or significance ?

Certainly not political scandals, or the aforementioned death and destruction, or large business transactions. Actually, a business transaction might lack precedent if we transitioned our entire economy into one based on sexual favors.

For an event to lack precedent, it would have to be wholly unique. For instance, the following:

An unprecedented attack on earth by an alien species
An unprecedented spontaneous freezing of all the earth's oceans
An unprecedented discovery of disembodied, beating human hearts living happily in the amazon rain forest.

And such.

Rather than being in the middle of "an unprecedented media firestorm," perhaps Larry Craig just meant that he certainly wasn't used to all the attention. Perhaps he could have qualified his statement to make it more accurate. A media firestorm unprecedented in the annals of closeted Idaho Senators stupid enough to solicit gay sex in an airport bathroom might work, but something tells me that Craig would rather err on the side of inaccuracy than get too caught up in the details.

Either way, I think its pretty fair to ask that we all stop saying unprecedented when we really mean "new to me."